How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity

More customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity "who can build a booking system in Seremban?" instead of scrolling Google. These assistants answer from sources they can find and trust. Getting mentioned is mostly about making your business easy for them to find, understand, and verify.

How AI assistants find businesses

Answers come from two places:

• Live search. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews run web searches and read the top results before answering. If your page ranks and is crawlable, it can be cited.
• Model memory. What the model learned during training. This changes slowly and you cannot edit it directly. It reflects how often and how consistently your business appeared across the web.

Live search is where you can make progress quickly, and it relies on the same index work as SEO. ChatGPT's search draws on its own crawler and on search partners including Bing; Gemini and AI Overviews rely on Google's index. So Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools both matter.

Step 1: Let the right crawlers in

Check your robots.txt and your CDN or firewall settings. Common crawlers:

Cloudflare and some hosts can block AI crawlers by default. If you want to be cited, check those settings match your robots.txt.

Step 2: Make key facts readable without JavaScript

Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. If your services, location, and contact details only appear after a React or page-builder script loads, the crawler may see an empty page. Test by viewing the page source (not the inspector). The important text should be there in plain HTML.

Step 3: State your facts clearly and consistently

Assistants try to verify claims across sources. Use the exact same business name, person's name, location, phone, and description of what you do on:

• Your website (home, about, contact, and footer)
• Google Business Profile
• LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram profiles
• Directory listings and marketplace profiles

Write the sentence you want quoted. For example: "Asyraf Digital is the personal brand of Mohd Asyraf Bin Mohd Pauzi, a freelance web developer and system developer in Sendayan, Negeri Sembilan, serving clients across Malaysia." A plain sentence like this is easy for an assistant to reuse.

Step 4: Add structured data

Schema.org markup in JSON-LD tells machines who you are without guessing: Organization or LocalBusiness for the business, Person for the founder, Service for each offering, FAQPage for questions, and Article for guides. Use sameAs to link your official profiles so the entity is connected across the web.

Step 5: Answer the questions customers actually ask

Assistants cite pages that answer a question directly. Create one page per service and per important question: "How much does a WordPress site cost in Malaysia?", "Freelancer or agency?", "Can you build a booking system?". Put the direct answer in the first paragraph, then the detail. Pages that say something specific, such as real price ranges, process steps, and named examples, are cited more often than generic marketing copy.

Step 6: Add llms.txt (optional)

llms.txt is a proposed file at the root of your site with a short summary and links to your best pages. It is not an official standard, but it costs little. This site publishes one at /llms.txt as an example.

Step 7: Earn mentions elsewhere

AI answers lean on third-party sources. Useful places for a Malaysian business:

• Google reviews that mention the service and location
• Industry associations, chambers of commerce, and local directories
• Client websites crediting you, case studies on partner sites
• Local media, podcasts, and community pages
• A complete LinkedIn profile whose headline matches your website

A worked example: this website

asyrafdigital.com applies these steps, so you can view the source and copy the approach:

• The homepage is a React app, but the key facts (name, role, location, services, FAQ) are also in plain HTML that loads without JavaScript
• Service pages, case studies, and these guides are static HTML pages that any crawler can read
• JSON-LD describes the person, the brand, each service, and each FAQ, with sameAs links to official profiles
• robots.txt allows search and AI answer crawlers, and /ai.txt states the preferred citation and facts
• The same one-sentence description is used on the website, in structured data, and in llms.txt
• Unknown URLs return a real 404, so old junk URLs do not compete with real pages

Write for the questions, not just the keywords

People ask assistants full questions: "Who builds custom booking systems for event halls in Negeri Sembilan, and roughly how much does it cost?" A page that answers that question with a direct sentence, a price range or cost drivers, and a named example is more useful to an assistant than a page repeating "booking system Malaysia". Useful formats:

• A short direct answer in the first paragraph
• Comparison tables (option A vs option B, by factor)
• Step-by-step processes and checklists
• FAQs with complete, standalone answers
• Named, verifiable examples such as case studies with links to the live project

Step 8: Check what assistants say

Every month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity the questions your customers ask, such as "freelance web developer in Negeri Sembilan". Note whether you appear, which pages they cite, and which competitors appear instead. Improve the pages they cite, or create the page that is missing.

Related

• What you need to rank in SEO
• Local SEO for Malaysian businesses
• Technical SEO launch checklist